Australia's offer should be accepted

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"The decision by the National Assembly to review Article 25 of the Constitution to provide for the principle of land appropriation without compensation is a watershed for the commercial agriculture in South Africa. Therefore, the offer by the Australian government, through that country's home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, to make it easier for white South African farmers to obtain visas should be welcomed with open arms," says Fanie Brink, an independent agricultural economist.

He said the government once again managed to reveal its ignorance in no uncertain terms about this destructive policy through various prescriptions and criticisms by the minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Lindiwe Sisulu, who tried to mislead countries abroad. The minister's accusation that Afriforum distributes false information about land expropriation in South Africa and that land expropriation without compensation does not pose any threat to commercial farmers must also be rejected in totality.

"The minister's expectations that the Australian government should use the “right channels to get clarity about the land reform process in South Africa" is absolutely ridiculous because the ANC government has no integrity and credibility. With this decision on land expropriation, the ANC has clearly demonstrated that it has no problem with sacrificing agriculture and by plunging the country in unprecedented famine and much higher poverty, purely to remain in power and therefore cannot be believed and trusted. The implementation of the National Assembly's decision to review Article 25 of the Constitution will be the beginning of the end of sustainable economic growth, prosperity and progress for South Africa."

Land expropriation without compensation is nothing new, but in fact a very old African ideology to firstly destroy the economy and then to make as many people as possible dependent on agriculture, which ultimately ends up in greater poverty and famine.

These developments have also started a period during which commercial agricultural producers must consider it very serious to again establish its own commercial agricultural organisation to ensure their future, because Agri SA and its affiliates have already sold them out through the totally biased support for the ANC government's policy on radical economic transformation, the redistribution of property and wealth and the conviction that current commercial producers have stolen the land on which they produce food for the country. Agri SA has already shown clearly that it supports the ANC government's policy of socialism through various policy views and statements in this regard and that the profitability and sustainability of commercial production of food and farm murders are not as important as the development of small black subsistence farmers.

The proposal earlier this week by a former vice president of Agri SA and now the chairman of the World Agriculture Union (WAU), dr Theo de Jager, that chapter 6 of the National Development Plan, which deals with the 50/50 partnership model to expropriate agricultural land must be implemented, must be rejected in totality. Particularly as far as the ridiculous creation of a million jobs in agriculture by establishing small-scale farmers on small pieces is concerned, instead of trying to increase agricultural production, as well as the far-reaching threat that the farms of farmers who do not want to participate in the plan will not be protected. Perhaps the WAU should show if it means anything to South Africa's agricultural producers with reference to the expropriation of land without compensation.

Therefore, the support of the Australian government needs to be even more welcomed because Agri SA has not yet reached out to the commercial producers' international allies for support or what the various international human rights conventions mean for the protection of commercial producers in South Africa.

"Due to the government's ignorance, it does not understand and realise that the two objectives of the expropriation land and the sustainability of food security are totally incompatible and that in the final instance there is simply a choice between these goals on which the Constitutional Review Committee will have to make recommendations,” said Brink.